As sensible parents well know, it isn't a good idea to give the kids everything they want, especially if they are whining and being petulant.
Same goes for our political leaders who have lately been behaving in a way that would drive moms and dads to distraction.
Even as we totter on the brink of another recession - for all too many people the last one never actually ended - we are again having to bear the spectacle of a shutdown of government.
Again we are being forced to watch as the irresistible force collides with the immovable object in Congress with each party qualifying under both descriptions.
But is the "each" factor the problem?
Though the United States is a country that prides itself on the principle of personal choice, voters are confined on election days to a choice between Democrats and Republicans.
The way things are going, this "choice" is increasingly of the Hobson's variety. Sure, it's a simple enough formula with an inbuilt efficiency absent from political life in some countries where political parties, one as mediocre as the next, seem to sprout like weeds.
But, as in all things, there is a happy medium. Maybe six viable parties is too many to consider, and would lead to fractious and unstable coalitions. But four viable parties might not be a stretch, and we could certainly handle three.
As is, there are smaller parties that compete for votes in individual states, and indeed across state lines, but they are not big enough to really prize open the doors of the duopoly that runs Washington, and every state capital.
It would not be necessary to argue for a third or fourth viable national party if there was a sense that both current incumbents - for that is what they effectively are - were working out their differences with the American people in mind, as opposed to their own ideologicial interests.
As it stands, we have the absurd situation in which a party - doesn't matter which one of them - can make a complete hash of government and the worst punishment that the voters can hand out is to relegate that party to the position of it being nothing less than the alternative government.
The Tea Party might appear to some as if it is the basis of a new party on the right, but those driving it and associating with it seem to be at pains to avoid being a literal political party. We hear of disquiet on the liberal side of the Democrats, but beyond that there is no visible effort to create a separate party entity.
As is, the Republicans retain their Tea Party members, while the Democrats hang on to "yellow dogs" "blue dogs" and perhaps other political canines as yet unidentified by color.
Needless to say, it is a very challenging thing to form a new party that will be both immediately viable, and lasting.
Looking at Ireland, for example, there was such political discontent in the 1980s that even three parties with experience of government wasn't enough for voters. Thus was born the Progressive Democrats. That party took part in government but is now defunct. The Irish Green Party also entered a coalition government and suffered enormously as a result.
Having a plethora of political parties, then, is no guaranteed cure for ills such as gridlock.
But in some circumstances having two dominant parties needing to woo a smaller third one in order to gain advantage leads to the kind of compromises so glaringly absent from the current political order.
If our political system remains stuck on two main parties, and two alone, we are back to the situation as outlined at the top of this editorial. How do we, the voters, get our politicians to behave like grown-ups? Do we go on strike and refuse to vote?
Well, all too many Americans don't vote anyway so that's not a good idea.
Perhaps if Republican and Democratic voters began to de-register from their party affiliations and re-sign as independents it might be a wake up call.
Regardless, we deserve more from our politicians - and that is not being whiney or petulant, merely needful and minimally deserving.
